


Let Someone In

by TheVeganTargaryen



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Discussions of mental illness, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e02 Honor Thy Father, Kind of angsty, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, liberal use of sentence fragments for stylistic purposes, now a multi-chapter AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-14 16:57:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4572387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVeganTargaryen/pseuds/TheVeganTargaryen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if, when Thea told Oliver to "let someone in," that person was Tommy? How would Tommy have reacted if Oliver had confessed to being the vigilante from the start?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Let Someone In

**Author's Note:**

> prompt from smoakingbillionaires on Tumblr: Something from when Oliver first came back from the island and he's having a hard time with everything; adjusting and trying to be the same Ollie everyone remembers. And Tommy wants to be there for him and help him through it but Oliver shuts him out and it really hurts Tommy's feelings. But things are getting worse for Oliver and when Thea tells him that 'you need to let somebody in, ollie' the only person he can think to turn to is Tommy. And they have a really huge, honest, open talk (maybe he tells Tommy about being the hood?).
> 
> This is kind of that, definitely with some liberties. One-shot for now, may expand into multi-chapter.

“Oliver, what the hell was that?”

He’d expected this after the disaster of a press conference at Queen Consolidated. The thing was, he’d expected it from anyone but the man in front of him. Walter, Moira, and Thea had surprisingly left him alone when they’d come home, their disappointed silence speaking louder than words could.

Oliver was in his room when he’d heard the footsteps in the hall, hastily stowing away his father’s notebook just in time for Tommy to enter the room.

“I’d be terrible in the business world.” Oliver forced a laugh. “You and I both know that.”

Tommy stepped further into the room, shutting the door behind him. Oliver unconsciously took a step toward the open window.

“All I know is that you got home a couple of weeks ago, you wanted to go to QC immediately, and now you’ve done a complete 180 and are trying to act like the last five years didn’t happen.”

He didn’t have time for this. Always going back and forth with someone new about how different he was or wasn’t. The past two weeks felt like months; he hadn’t counted on it being so difficult to readjust. He hadn’t counted on a lot of things, though. Moving up his plans to put on the hood. The amount of lying he’d actually have to do to his family. John Diggle’s presence in his life thanks to a suddenly-overprotective parent (and wasn’t it practically laughable that Moira Queen thought there was something more dangerous on these streets than Oliver himself?).

But by far the hardest part was playing “Ollie” for everyone when he barely remembered how. “Come on, Tommy. I’m just trying to get back to normal.”

“Well you’re not doing a very good job of it,” Tommy retorted.

“I know patience isn’t one of your virtues,” Oliver replied, infusing his tone with as much sarcastic Ollie as he could remember, “but you could try giving it more than a few days.”

Tommy shook his head. “It’s not that, and you know it. You might be able to lie to everyone else, but not to me. You think I don’t know what you sound like when you’re lying to the cops?” he pushed (and without moving an inch, Tommy somehow made the room seem smaller). “You think I don’t know when you’re sober and pretending to be drunk? Like your coming home party. Or earlier today at that press conference. Oliver, I don’t know what you’re doing...if it’s some kind of trauma thing you’ve just got to work out...but at least tell someone the truth. Tell _me_ the truth.”

“Thea said something kind of like that.” He sidestepped Tommy catching him in the lies (Tommy was the only one who ever could and not just because he used to help come up with most of them). “Told me I had to ‘let someone in.’” He laughed, and there was no humor in it.

“She told me she took you out to the graves,” Tommy admitted after a long, uncomfortable silence fell between them. Silences never used to be uncomfortable for Oliver and Tommy. “She meant well. She really did.”

It sounded, Oliver thought, like Tommy was the big brother responsible for explaining Thea’s behavior and Oliver was just the stranger who wandered in from the cold. In more ways than he wanted to admit, that was the truth. And yet, he just couldn’t find it in him to really _feel_ anything, like this whole conversation was happening to someone else and he was just a third party observer paying more attention to where all the room’s exits were.

He took a moment to assess Tommy--to really _look_ at him. The fold of his arms across his chest, the set of his jaw, the blazing hard look in his eyes. Oliver had seen that look many times before: the patented Tommy Merlyn “I’m Never Letting This Go so Don’t Try and Make Me” special. And more than anything, Oliver wanted to give in. He wanted to confess everything to his best friend and let everything go back to how it was before. Before the island. Before he came home and started living half his life in flashbacks. Before he’d found that damn notebook.

But all of that had happened, and if Tommy ever found out, he’d be a target. He’d be in danger for knowing too much (half the Queen and Merlyn family’s goddamn social circle was in his father’s book).

_Your best friend’s safety depends on him never learning the truth._

“There’s nothing to tell, Tommy. What could I possibly be hiding from you? That maybe after five years away I’ve changed a little bit?”

“And you’re trying to pretend that you haven’t changed at all. That’s the problem, Oliver. You’re hiding something. From me--from everyone.” For the first time, Oliver sensed the unease behind his friend’s words, the accusations fading away into questions.

This time it was a Russian voice in his ear, demanding harshly that he practice _again_ , that the lie detector picked up a flutter, that he wasn’t getting up from the table until he beat it.

“I’m not hiding anything from you.”

_еще раз, Oliver._

“That wasn’t even _English._ ” It wasn’t? Oliver hadn’t realized. “That’s what I mean. It’s shit like this. The Russian, now--at dinner last week--which I know for a fact you never spoke a word of in your life. When we were kidnapped by those people…”

“The hood guy saved us.” Oliver stepped over his words carefully to make sure he chose them in the right language.

“I wasn’t fully out. I didn’t see anyone in a green hood chasing those guys down.”

“I’ll keep my promise. I’ll take away everything and everyone you love. Sara was only the first.” Slade’s voice was low in his ear, clear as if there were a third person on the Amazo with them.

“It was you, Oliver.”

“I keep my promises, kid.”

“Oliver?”

His fingers twitched for want of a bowstring between them. Where was his bow? Slade? The scene was wrong, and he didn’t know why.

“ _Oliver._ ”

Tommy’s face came into focus, and Oliver scrambled to catch up with the past few minutes of conversation. “You think the hood guy is me.”

“You’re not denying it.”

This was it, the time for half truths to devolve fully into lies, and the Hood couldn’t find a single word, and silence stretched on forever. He watched Tommy’s face and recognized a hundred miniscule changes without understanding a single one. He had only ever had time to read body language. Glance it over, deflect a punch or a get out of the way of a bullet, destroy and move on. That was the life: always keep moving, or it’s over.

He hated being still.

Neither of them had moved an inch.

“Fuck.” It was Tommy who finally broke the silence, the soft swear uttered with a hundred regrets. “Oliver. You’re the Hood? But the Hood… He _kills_. He’s a murderer.” Tommy’s eyes were wide, as if pleading for Oliver to tell him that something else--anything else--was true.

“It’s kill or be killed,” he replied, and it was with a deeper timbre than he used at the house. It was his Hood voice. It was his real voice.

“I’m out of here. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

Tommy turned his back, walking out the door. Oliver only knew that no matter what, he couldn’t let him get there, because if Tommy walked out on him now, everything he had ever known about their friendship was over. Maybe that was what fueled what he blurted out next. “You were in Hong Kong.”

The room fell silent, and Tommy paused with his hand reached out towards the door handle. There was a tension in his shoulders that made him instantly brace himself for any sudden movements.

Finally, after what felt like several minutes but was probably only a few seconds, Tommy turned around to face him, hurt clearly evident in his eyes. “How did you know that?”

“I was there, Tommy.”

“You were on a deserted island.”

“For some of the time.”

“And you let us all believe you were dead? You knew I was in Hong Kong looking for you, and you just--you what--avoided me?”

“I wanted to tell you, Tommy. Why do you think you even got that alert off my email? I was trying to go home the whole time, but they wouldn’t let me. They took me off Lian Yu to work for them. I tried to escape at every turn, and I couldn’t. Tommy, you showed up there, and they wanted me to _kill_ you because you got too close to finding me.”

The color drained from Tommy’s face, and Oliver had a swift, uncharitable thought that if he had to live through it, everyone else could deal with hearing the blunt version of the story.

“You weren’t alone on the island, were you?” Tommy took a step closer.

“No.”

“And you weren’t allowed to come home.”

“No.” Another half-truth. Tommy’s hand was still on the door. He had no idea if he wanted him to leave or stay. ( _Stay. Please_.) “You should go. You shouldn’t even know about any of this”

He should ask. He should ask if Tommy was going to tell anyone. If Tommy was going to hightail it out of there and call Laurel--or Detective Lance. And he didn’t have his plan quite in place yet to prove he wasn’t the Hood. He wasn’t quite done with the background check on Diggle yet, and the moving puzzle pieces had shifted to focus on the ex-soldier-turned-bodyguard.

“If you think I’m leaving, you don’t know me nearly as well as I thought you did.” Tommy dug his heels in harder. He could _see_ it in the expression as he dropped the door handle, as he crossed the room and walked right up to Oliver. He was in his space. “I’m safe, Oliver. But whatever this...crusade thing is you’ve got going on? You need to stop. You’re not on the island anymore. Or in Hong Kong. Or wherever else it is you’ve been over the past five years. You’re home.”

He didn’t move. Forced his breathing to stay steady. “None of us are safe here!” It came out harsher than he intended. “I came back because I have a job to do.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I’ve already told you too much.”

Tommy laughed, and it was his incredulous laugh. “No. The Oliver I know isn’t a killer. Isn’t some kind of vigilante. And he wouldn’t be one if there wasn’t a damn good reason, so if you’re doing this…”

Tommy paused, and a lifetime passed in a few seconds.

“If you’re doing this, I’m in, and don’t you dare say it’s too dangerous because you _should_ know me better than to think I’d ever let you go it alone. And besides, who’s gonna be in charge of coming up with a better set of alibis because yours are--”

It was all Tommy had time to get out before Oliver’s mouth was covering his, capturing Tommy’s lips in an embrace that was familiar and urgent, like Oliver could somehow scratch away layers of the separation between them. Like they had half a chance of going back to what they used to be. But different this time. Better. No one to come between them. And once Oliver took care of righting his father’s wrongs, maybe there would be something to look forward to.

Maybe the city wouldn’t break him. Maybe the mission wouldn’t kill him.

Tommy was kissing him back eagerly, his hands winding their way into Oliver’s shirt to tug him closer. He tasted the same as Oliver remembered--but maybe a little less like the tequila that was generally a precursor for when they hooked up--and why did this feel so much more like coming home than anything else so far?

When they broke apart, they were both breathing hard, and Tommy was grinning, and it met his eyes. “You definitely win the best long-lost billionaire homecoming award.”

He laughed, and he it almost felt sincere. “Because I was up against so much competition?” Oliver asked, one eyebrow raised.

“Interestingly, a little,” Tommy said as casually as if he was discussing the weather. Oliver never knew how Tommy did that; it had always been that way. He’d just be able to shift his whole energy to be exactly what Oliver needed in any given moment. (In the past, Tommy had been the one to bring Oliver back from the edge more than once. Now Oliver was fairly certain there was no going back from whatever edge he just jumped off, but he appreciated the effort just the same.) “Bruce turned up about a year before you did.”

“Seriously?” Oliver did his best to feign surprise. Bruce had frequented their billionaire-trust-fund-kids-with-no-parental-supervision club back before he’d up and disappeared without a trace a couple of years before the Gambit went down.

Tommy nodded. “Wouldn’t talk to the press about it or anything. Just came back and took up with Wayne Enterprises. I called him; he just gave me some bullshit about retreats and needing space. I think your homecoming trumps his, definitely.”

“Even after what I just told you?”

“Even after you didn’t really tell me anything and I had to guess,” Tommy corrected. “So are you going to tell me what the vigilante thing’s about?”

“There’s this notebook,” Oliver began, and the conversation lasted well into the early morning, and somehow--miraculously--Tommy Merlyn’s commitment never once wavered.


	2. Progress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy & Oliver continue to bond as they navigate Oliver's return. Set between 1x02 & 1x03.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so, soooo much to everyone who has commented & left kudos. They really made my day(s) and have inspired me to make this a multi-chapter. I'll probably be bumping the rating of this fic up now that I've decided to continue. I've got lots of ideas for this AU, but as I can't re-write every canon moment, I'd definitely appreciate if you let me know if there is something you definitely want to see. Season 1 will stay at least somewhat close to the same storyline, but obviously the Undertaking plot will change drastically, and the further we get in the timeline, the larger the changes will be for the AU, so I can't promise to accommodate _any_ canon moment, but I'll be sure to do my best.
> 
> I'd intended to get through the events of 1x03 in this one, but I didn't even start the events of 1x03 because it was getting long. Sorry! It'll happen next chapter; I promise! Anyways, I've rambled on enough. Enjoy, and happy reading!

Tommy hadn’t really been home in five days.

That wasn’t unusual in and of itself, particularly now that he had Oliver back. He doubted Malcolm had noticed (again, entirely expected). Raisa had basically taken his presence for granted, much as she had done virtually his entire life. The Queens (and Walter) were a little strange about it, taking the time to thank him for being around and helping Oliver “get back to normal” as they sometimes liked to phrase it. He never really knew quite how to respond when they treated him like he was doing some kind of public service by spending time with his best friend.

Oliver coming home, he was realizing with increasing frequency, was jarring almost more than it was relieving for most of the people in his life. In the blink of an eye, years of grief and coping and growing were thrown into upheaval as they tried to get Oliver to settle down into being someone familiar so they could all go back to a semblance of who they were before the Gambit went down.

Tommy, on the other hand, had no way of telling them that for him it was the other way around. It was Oliver who was leading him into a new, unfamiliar (and sickeningly eye-opening) world full of lists in notebooks, and corruption, and the underbelly of the city that Tommy was ashamed to admit he’d ignored his entire life.

Still, none of that was a fraction of what Oliver himself was dealing with. (Sometimes Tommy wanted to just shout that at everyone, to make them take a good look at the person who’d come home and make them realize that in comparison, all the rest of their adjustments were practically microscopic. But Oliver didn’t _want_ anyone looking too closely, so Tommy kept his mouth shut.)

Some of the changes were so subtle, Tommy barely realized they were there, particularly when Oliver put on his “public” face that he used with everyone from the relentless paparazzi to the bodyguard who miraculously hadn’t quit his job yet. Some others, however, were _very_ noticeable.

Like how Tommy hadn’t slept at home for five days and was somehow always in bed alone. Like right now, at 3:34 A.M., when he woke up to the too-loud sound of rain outside the window, sprawled out in the middle of Oliver’s king-sized bed.

The window, as usual, was open, but the spot on the floor Oliver had claimed for a sleeping space was vacated. (That was another weird thing: as much as he said he got a few hours each night, Oliver was somehow always awake whenever Tommy woke up.) Deciding no one was there to mind if he shut out the already icy chill of a Starling City October night, he’d gotten up to close it when he was distracted by movement from outside.

Oliver.

Of course it was Oliver. The same man who’d once called for limo service for the evening to take them to clubs within two blocks of each other because it was lightly drizzling was outside, wandering in the rain.

Deciding he didn’t want to risk it being some sleepwalking thing and cursing his 3 A.M. life choices, Tommy pulled on a pair of jeans and some shoes and headed for the back door.

The second it opened, Oliver turned to the source of the noise, and maybe Tommy was imagining things, but he thought he saw his posture relax, just a little, when he saw who it was.

“What are you doing out here?” Tommy called, even as he made his way across the manicured grass and towards the trees that bordered the edges of the lawn. It was dark, but not can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face dark thanks to lights that switched on with motion sensors.

Oliver shrugged and, with a smile Tommy couldn’t quite read, replied, “I just miss being outside.”

“Would’ve thought you’d had enough ‘outside’ to last a lifetime.”

“You get used to it.”

They lapsed into silence, and Tommy contemplated the discomfort of wet jeans and also how he’d never been able to readily associate the words “Oliver” and “silence.” He didn’t say that, though. Over the years, Tommy had finely honed what he believed to be a natural talent for sensing what to say and when to say it. He supposed he could grudgingly put it on the list for things he could thank Malcolm for—plenty of opportunity to practice.

“Do you wish I hadn’t told you?” Oliver asked suddenly, and the question was so out of left field that Tommy didn’t know quite how to respond.

“What? No. I...do _you_ wish you hadn’t told me?”

“I don’t know.” He paused. “I mean, I know that I’m glad I did for a lot of reasons. But this could still put you in danger. If you get too close—”

Clearly this was going to be a Thing between them, and Tommy could kind of see why. Oliver hadn’t told him the whole story (“far from it,” he’d said), but he hadn’t softened the blow on any of the harsh realities of his new lifestyle. There was violence. There was death. At Oliver’s hands. _Oliver_ , who’d cried when they were nine and Robert had taken them fishing for the first time (the halibut had gone back in the water, and Tommy had been made to swear he’d take that secret to his grave), was a highly trained killer. Who attracted enemies.

“We’ve been through this. If there’s this much corruption in the city, I’m not gonna sit back and let you be the only one to make it right.”

“My father left this job to me.” Oh, Oliver. Always bordering on...could it be called martyrdom if others had forced his cross to bear on him?

“Unless you can show me where it said you had to work alone, I’m not going anywhere. And even then,” he added, folding his arms over his chest, “I’m still not going anywhere. I don’t know how I can help you, but I’m going to.” Chances are if the Queens were responsible for a lot of the corrupt one percenters, the Merlyn family couldn’t be too far behind.

He knew he’d won the next iteration of the argument when he could just make out Oliver’s lips turning up in a smile, and that was definitely worth freezing his ass off in a now-soaked t-shirt.

“What do you say we take this back up to the bedroom?”

Oliver, who was apparently some version of inhuman and unaffected by the weather, hesitated. “I might stay out here a bit longer.”

“Why?” Now was the time to dig a little deeper, now that he’d reassured Oliver he wasn’t going anywhere and he knew Oliver was present in the conversation. Sometimes he wasn’t, and Tommy thought he was getting a little bit better at recognizing that, even if half the time he didn’t know what to do to help. “What’s it going to do to your reputation if you start sneezing all over the people you’re shooting at?”

“I just like to know that I can.” Oliver stopped for a long moment, but it felt like a pause, not the end of the discussion. Tommy wasn’t great at being patient, but he would be for Oliver. “Back on the island, this would’ve gotten me killed,” he started up again.

The bone deep shiver that ran up Tommy’s spine had very little to do with the rain.

“There was...even if I had been there alone and there weren’t other people, pretty much everything was deadly. Half the plants, some of the animals—don’t even get me started on the insects. Guess I should be grateful I wasn’t alone there. I would’ve died within the week.” As he spoke, he sounded more familiar, more like Ollie: the rhythm and cadence of his voice shifting back in ways Tommy hadn’t realized he’d deviated from.

Perhaps ironically, that was how he knew he was starting to lose Oliver to a memory, and he shuffled closer next to him, sliding an arm around Oliver’s waist and drawing the other man in. There wasn’t much to be offered in the way of body heat, but sometimes touch could be grounding. Tommy had read it during one long evening’s worth of searches about PTSD while Oliver was out under the hood. (Oliver swore stubbornly up and down that he didn’t have it, but he also spent half his time wrapped up in flashbacks and disappearing to places Tommy couldn’t follow.)

He responded, though, wrapping his arm around Tommy’s shoulders. “Right...but the rain.” Good. He was focusing again. “I’ve hated thunderstorms ever since the Gambit went down, but on the island it was worse. If you didn’t stay dry, it was dangerous. I guess I just like knowing that I can come out here and go back in whenever I want. It’s stupid, I know.”

“It’s not,” Tommy interjected immediately. “Oliver, that makes a lot of sense. You like not having to worry about that.”

Oliver nodded, but he started determinedly straight ahead. “Knowing that. It… well… it’s one of the only things that actually feels freeing about being back here. The rest of it? Tommy, I miss the island.”

“Even after everything that happened there?”

“It was my home. And now I—”

“Now you don’t feel like you belong anywhere.”

Oliver did look down at him then, shifting so they were once again face to face in the dark (and wasn’t that some weirdly accurate metaphor for the way things were between them?). “Exactly. But if I did belong somewhere, I think it’s there. Everything was—it was _simple_ there. Kill or be killed. It’s all I’ve known ever since I got there. I understand it. I don’t know how to be here anymore as anyone except the Hood. Everything’s so loud here, and there are people—there are people everywhere, Tommy. I spent five years having every decision made for me so I could get turned into this...thing _thing_ that I am now. And now that I’m home all anyone ever wants to do is tell me what to do and track my every move and turn me back into Ollie, and that’s impossible now. I can’t live like that anymore. It’s driving me crazy. I’m never gonna be free, Tommy. And what good is any of it? Ollie’s dead, Oliver’s just the mask, and all that’s left is the Hood.” He was angrier now, harsher: fully in the moment. “Can you live with that?”

“Yes.” Maybe that answer terrified him a little bit. Maybe if he were saner he’d run for the hills. But he didn’t regret it one bit.

He didn’t regret it even more when Oliver’s answer consisted entirely of lips meeting his in a hard, bruising kiss. The rain was still pelting down at them, making the whole thing considerably less sexy than Hollywood liked to pretend rain kisses were. It was still freezing, and Oliver’s lips were cold and slippery against his own, and there was definitely some rainwater on both of their tongues. It didn’t matter, though; Tommy just tugged him closer, his hand resting over the taut muscle of Oliver’s back underneath his t-shirt. He could feel bumps and ridges under his palm, too, no doubt of scar tissue he’d heard about but hadn’t seen.

It was the thought, then, of the many expanses of Oliver’s skin he had not yet been allowed to map and re-trace since his return that made Tommy break away from the kiss. “Let’s go back to the bedroom now.”

Oliver, thankfully, no longer seemed opposed to the idea, and he had only just shut the door behind them when Tommy was pressed back up against him, more than eager to make up for years of lost time.

When he reached for the hem of Oliver’s shirt, though, Oliver nipped at his lower lip as a non-verbal warning, and one rough and callused hand covered his. Hypocritically, Oliver’s free hand was working its way under the soaked cotton of Tommy’s v-neck. It was the third time this week that Tommy had found himself in the exact same situation, and it was this that made him draw back.

“Maybe we should try and get some sleep,” he said, though he was pretty sure the fact that his eyes kept wandering in the direction of the fabric plastered to Oliver’s torso was betraying his actual desires. (And was that a _tattoo_ he could spot through the now-semi-transparent shirt?)

“Or maybe you could let me keep going.” And fuck what Oliver had just said down in the yard because that grin was pure Ollie.

God knew Tommy was not one to complain about sex of any kind (least of all sex with Oliver), but it kind of ruined the moment when he wasn’t allowed to look and wasn’t even really allowed to touch. Yeah, sure, Oliver could do some sinful things with his mouth, but it kind of concerned Tommy that he so far hadn’t been allowed to reciprocate, and the third time was apparently not the charm. “As much as I’d love to”—a yawn found its way in between his words with eerily perfect timing—“it’s almost 4 A.M., and I think we should both go back to sleep.”

Oliver made some kind of grumbling noise halfway between frustration and assent, and it was with some reluctance that he went off to change into dry clothes (in the bathroom with the door shut, Tommy noted).

His hangups in that particular area really were disconcerting, and after all the things he said he’d been through—various forms of torture among them—Tommy was really not liking the implications. They made his stomach twist in uncomfortable knots, and how did he even begin to broach that subject with Oliver?

However he was going to do it, now wasn’t the time, and he pushed the thought aside with some level of reluctance, changing out his own clothes for a wonderfully dry t-shirt and pair of boxers stolen liberally from Oliver’s drawers. (Pretty soon he was going to have to go home, if only so some of his own things could migrate over to the Queen mansion if he was going to keep being Oliver’s nightly alibi for his Hood activities.)

He was in bed again, eyes shut and starting to doze, when he felt the mattress dip behind him and a warm weight pressed against his back. “Thought beds were too soft,” he muttered as he settled in under the arm Oliver tucked around him.

“They are. I’m just gonna stay here for a little.”

“’S your bed.” The will to converse was had dissipated even more between the down-filled pillows and Oliver’s solid presence. He might’ve said something in reply--Tommy wasn’t sure. It was just before he drifted off that he felt Oliver get up to return to the floor.

A part of him was marginally disappointed, but the rest of him recognized it for what it was.

Progress.


	3. Permanent Effects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver encounters Deadshot for the first time, and Tommy gets a more up close and personal look at the effects of the vigilante lifestyle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who has read, commented, & left kudos! You guys make it such a rewarding experience to keep writing, and I'm really grateful for it! I thought I was going to get through all the events of 1x03 in this chapter, but the boys got a little lengthy in their conversation, and I still have a lot of work to do as I set things up for this AU. I promise more characters will appear soon!
> 
> Also, I'm going to try to update each of my 2 ongoing fics once per week. I can't always guarantee to keep to that schedule, but this means updates every two weeks for this fic here, alternating with my Arrow/Leverage/White Collar fic, [The Campaign](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4781285/chapters/10937831).

Oliver was fighting a losing battle. Clawing his way up and out of the memories wasn’t something that was happened easily on the best of days.

Some nights were easier than others, though. Nock. Draw. Breathe. Shoot. Repeat. Oliver never felt more alive--more whole and connected to himself--than when he was wearing his hood, bow in hand, and taking care of his city, crossing names off the list.

Tonight’s priority was James Holder, a man notorious for cutting corners in low income housing with defective smoke detectors. There had been many fires and too many funerals, and the vigilante was going to give him one chance to make it right.

Holder’s security went down easy--almost pitifully so--and the Hood was able to sneak onto the roof undetected as Holder continued his phone conversation, oblivious and going on about business deals and company auctions. There was no more time to waste.

The vigilante fired an arrow and, startled, Holder immediately called for security. “They can’t hear you,” he replied with a smirk, relishing the look on the man’s face as he realized what it was like to have the tables turned on him, to have all odds suddenly stacked against him. “James Holder.” He drew his bow. “You have failed--”

A shot rang out before he could ever complete the sentence, and it was the last thing Holder would ever hear. The death ruined his plans, but gun fire was the more immediate problem. He spun in place, firing arrows off into the distance in the direction the bullets came from (whoever the sniper was, he was good: far enough away that the Hood could hardly get a visual). A minor pain flared in his arm as one bullet grazed him--a pain easily ignored in favor of a fight. But the firing stopped as quickly as it had begun, and there was nothing further he could do at the scene.

He made his way back to the Foundry, and Oliver Queen re-emerged when he pulled off the hood. It was always harder being Oliver Queen.

He had a text from Tommy waiting for him, asking if Oliver wanted him to bring food down to the Foundry, and he sent back a monosyllabic, “Yes,” but the corners of his mouth were upturned in a smile. He wasn’t really in the mood to eat, but he had work to do before he could leave, and maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t have to do it alone.

If Tommy were going to show up there, though, he’d have to make quick work of patching up his bullet wound. Maybe Tommy knew the truth about him, and he was a lot more eager to help right the wrongs of this city than Oliver would have guessed, but there were aspects of this lifestyle… things he was better off not seeing.

One of them, Oliver thought as he discarded the green leather jacket, was this. Whether he meant the blood or the next scar in his ever-growing collection, he couldn’t really say. He knew it bothered Tommy, his reluctance to showcase them, but Oliver had already told him about being the vigilante. He’d already shared his mission. Tommy had already heard the stories about the island (and Hong Kong, and Russia) that Oliver had been able to bring himself to talk about.

Was it so wrong that he wanted to put off the final, superficial confirmation that he was in no way the same man who got on the Queen’s Gambit?

Oliver was well-versed enough in giving himself stitches that the process didn’t take much time, and he’d just finished up when a wave of dizziness crashed over him.

He moved to stand, and the room tilted around him, shapes distorting. The bullet--it must have been the bullet. Hoping the herbs he’d thought to pack in his trunk would work their magic once more, he stumbled over to the weathered wooden case where his bow was unstrung and resting.

His limbs felt heavy, every movement a chore as he grasped clumsily for the pouch of herbs. Pouring some into the pestle to grind them, his vision blurred, and he had no idea how off his aim was.

From somewhere behind them he heard noises--footsteps on the stairs. “Oliver?” Tommy.

Fingers scrabbled for purchase against the table as he swayed where he stood. “Poison.” He was going to have to choose his words carefully. Make them count.

“Oliver, what are you talking about? What poison?” The voice was right in his ear now, and warm hands steadied his balance, closing over his bicep and resting against the scars on his back. “We need to call 911.”

“No hospitals.” He hoped the vehemence in his tone was enough. “Herbs. Grind ’em, then water.”

“I don’t think--”

“Get the herbs,” he said again, his voice pitching lower--the timbre he normally reserved for the Hood. It must have been at least a little effective because choking down the mixture was the last thing he remembered before losing consciousness.

When he woke up, he was on the cot he kept tucked away in the corner of the Foundry, covered with the heavy gray shock blanket; Tommy must have moved him there. Daylight was streaming in through the windows, and Oliver wondered how long he’d been up.

Pulling himself to a sitting position with a groan as his stiff muscles protested, he’d hardly finished moving when he saw Tommy in the corner of his eye, up and moving toward him. “You didn’t need to stay.”

“Hell of a greeting for someone who saved your life,” Tommy quipped, but he was pale--too pale--and there was a slight tremor in his voice.

“This is why I didn’t want you coming down here that much.” Maybe Tommy knew the truth, and Oliver knew he wanted to help, but Tommy wasn’t cut out for this life. And what was worse was that he seemed to think it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if he were. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if he meant almost dying from a poison-tipped bullet or the way Tommy’s gaze was straying down to the physical effects of Oliver’s hard-won survival now on full display.

Oliver hated it.

Tommy’s eyes were filled for an instant with that same pity he’d seen from the doctors who’d swarmed him at Starling General, pampering him with useless care and handing him brochures for plastic surgery and skin grafts he’d thrown away while staring them down. It was the same pity he’d seen in his mother’s eyes--the first emotion that had been there when the shocked relief faded, and his sister’s when she’d seen the scars for the first time.

Tommy looked, and it was Oliver who saw, the weight of the gaze on each mark bringing with it wave after wave of memory he’d rather forget.

As it so often was, it was Tommy who broke the silence. “You said there were scars…”

“It’s nothing.” It was a statement that no one would believe.

“That’s not nothing. That’s… how did you even _survive_?”

He pulled himself up off the cot in search of his shirt, highly aware of his scars and where the improperly-healed tissue gave a constant, dull ache, and the way the burned skin on his lower back pulled, inflexible and too tight, when he moved too fast. He was good at internalizing all of it when he didn’t have to be reminded it was there; pain had taken a permanent spot in his daily life until it hardly registered as such. “It was that or be killed.” What had he even been thinking, leading Tommy even this far into it? “I don’t think we should do this anymore.”

“What? _No._ Oliver, look at me.” And Oliver did. Impossibly, the revulsion he’d been expecting the pity to give way to wasn’t anywhere to be found. Instead, Tommy’s gaze had hardened, determined and somehow not making Oliver feel like he was a project or something to be fixed. “You don’t get to push me away every time something’s uncomfortable for you. Because, guess what? That’s going to happen. A lot. This isn’t--none of this is easy, but you’ve already been through the worst of it.”

Oliver laughed harshly at that, turning to face his best friend more directly. Arms crossed and jaw tightened, he held himself the way the vigilante did, could feel his expression morphing into that same glare. “If you think the worst of it’s over, you really shouldn’t be here. This city’s a cancer. It’s dangerous, it’s corrupt, and I’m not going to be able to fight it without getting in the middle of it.”

“Do you practice those dramatic little speeches in the mirror?” Tommy, unlike the rest of the city’s one percenters, looked like he didn’t really give a fuck that he was being stared down by the Hood. “No, seriously, Oliver,” he pressed on, taking a step forward, “I want to know: why do you think you can pull this out of your ass to try and scare me off the second things aren’t going according to your plan?”

“If things don’t go according to plan, people die. I won’t let you be one of them.”

“People aren’t going to die because you’re keeping m e a little bit less at arm’s length.”

“I’m not--”

“Don’t try to deny it.” Tommy didn’t raise his voice often, and it was how Oliver knew he’d nearly pushed too far. “Yeah, you told me about all of this, about your mission, and where you’ve been. But clearly you left out the worst of it.” He gestured to the marks that wouldn’t stop shouting Oliver’s stories no matter how hard he wished they weren’t there. “You tell me you want to be with me, and then you barely let me near you. It’s like I’m your alibi and not your…”

“But you are,” Oliver returned, neatly sidestepping the fact that neither of them quite had a word for what they were to each other. “I don’t...it’s not easy for me to talk about what happened there.” Even saying that was a chore. “You already know more than I ever thought I’d tell anyone, and if you knew the whole story… you’d see me differently. Well, even more differently.”

“I already see you differently. Not in a bad way, different. Just… you’ve changed. So have I. But, look: I get why you don’t want anyone else really picking up on that. It’s not good for the whole secret identity thing. But like it or not, I’m a part of this, and you have to trust that I’m not gonna go running for the hills the second you tell me something you’re not sure I’ll like hearing.”

He was right, and Oliver knew it. Still, the words did very little to soothe his nerves. Maybe that would come with time. “If you’re still sure…”

“I’m still sure.” And then, as if to prove it, he asked, “So are you gonna tell me now how you got yourself poisoned last night?”

“Went to confront James Holder about cutting corners on his low income housing. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one who wanted to go after him last night. Sniper took him out, kept shooting, and I got hit with a stray bullet. Whoever it was must have been using poison on the bullets as a backup.”

If the matter of fact description of the night’s events bothered Tommy, he didn’t show it. “So that’s just one more person off the list taken care of then?”

“No. Whoever’s out there is dangerous and reckless.”

Tommy raised an eyebrow.

“He’s killing, and I need to know why.”

“For the record? I’m not opposed to you taking down snipers, even if it _is_ a bit hypocritical, but how are you even going to begin finding out who else could’ve had it in for Holder?”

“I didn’t have it in for Holder,” Oliver replied, finally finding his shirt and pulling it on. “We were just going to have a pointed conversation.”

“I cannot believe you just made an arrow pun.” The tension sufficiently broken between them, Tommy grabbed a coffee off a to-go tray Oliver hadn’t noticed. “This is probably cold by now, but I figured you could use the caffeine boost.”

Oliver accepted it gratefully and took a sip. It was, indeed, lukewarm. “This is terrible coffee. And not just because it’s the wrong temperature.”

Tommy shrugged. “It was the closest place within walking distance. But speaking of businesses in the Glades, any thoughts to what you’re gonna do with this place?” They’d talked, a lot, about developing some kind of business over the Foundry so Oliver would have a more credible excuse to be heading down to the Glades every night and no one would ask too many questions. “You’re running out of good excuses.”

“I think I came up with an idea.” As he spoke, he sat down in front of the computer and checked his phone. Missed calls and texts from some numbers he didn’t recognize, others he did--all of them, no doubt, friends from his former life looking to either catch up or (more likely) cash in on getting back into his inner circle now that he was all over the tabloids and gossip sites again. A couple of missed calls from John Diggle as well. Unsurprising, since Oliver had taken off on him in the middle of dinner, leaving Tommy to explain the sudden disappearance and make sure he wasn’t followed.

He texted a response to his mandated bodyguard before turning his attention over the computer, pulling up access to Interpol files he really shouldn’t have. “I think it’ll be a nightclub.”

“Excellent choice. And who knows, maybe some nights you’ll actually take some time off and enjoy it.”

“I told Diggle to meet us here,” Oliver said as he entered what little information he had on the sniper as search parameters.

“Yeah, speaking of Diggle. Oliver, I _know_ you can lie better than that. What’s up with you not bothering to try and cover your ass with him? He’s smart. And also carries a gun.”

“It’s part of the plan,” was all Oliver said before picking up a manila folder next to him and handing it to Tommy. “His background check came up clean, and I’m gonna need him to help me out with all of this.”

“I mean, yeah, this looks good. But how do you know he’ll even go for it?” Tommy asked, leaning against the desk as he flipped through the pages.

“I don’t,” Oliver replied simply. “While this is running--”

“Is that the FBI database?” Tommy abandoned the results of Diggle’s background check, leaning over his shoulder to get a better look at what he was doing.

“Interpol,” Oliver corrected. “I know a back way into the system that I can probably only use this one time before they find out and change it.”

“How?”

“Long story.” Amanda Waller was never a topic of conversation he was willing to focus on for any length of time.

“And what if you need information like this again? You have to admit; it’d probably come in handy.”

“Then I guess I’ll just have to find myself a hacker.”


End file.
